ABSTRACT
Why should the controversy over what would seem to be such an academic subject as postmodemism be so tempestuous, if not to say scandalous? Russian critics have not engaged in such heated arguments since the time of the Thaw: the gamut runs from hosannas to anathema, from proclaiming postmodemism to be "progressive and relevant" to warding off the devil with an Orthodox cross. Even Solzhenitsyn has found it impossible to resist cursing this new temptation. 1 It would be too facile to dismiss these debates as the thinly veiled generational conflict between the "men of the sixties" and their hungry offspring, for the fault line runs within a single generation: Such famous younger critics as, for eXam.ple, Aleksandr Arkhangel 'skii, Andrei Nemzer, or Pavel Basinskii can in no way be considered apologists for postmodemism. It is quite possible that their indignation is aroused by the arrogance of the postmodemists, a group of hardly starving artists who have adopted the best habits of the literary avant-garde, &om unrestrained bragging to a caste-like intolerance in their evaluation of other people's work.
